Tag: libraries

Upon hearing the success of reminiscence boxes from our colleagues in other NHS libraries we decided to check out the idea. The boxes are used to help people living with dementia and their families to evoke happy moments from the past and stimulate communication by handling objects and looking at pictures. Our dementia lead nurse Anita Ruckledge turned out to be very keen for us to find out more.

The Trust Communications Team has assisted us by putting out an appeal for kind donations of 60s memorabilia to enable us to create our own boxes – and so we wait with excitement – keep following to see what turns up!

If you have any 60s memorabilia (anything from clothing to crockery) you would like to donate please contact Anita Ruckledge, Dementia Lead Nurse, Anita.Ruckledge@midyorks.nhs.uk or call 07780954892.

The library is now a ‘Dementia Champion’ and we have added a selection of Reading Agency reccomended titles to support those living with dementia & their families/carers. Anita has reviewed some of the books from the collection and says:

“This book explores reactions from children when Grandma is forgetful. To assess the suitability of this book I read this with my 10 year old Granddaughter, who loved the book and said that she will be telling her teachers at school.”

Pop along to MY Library and check out our wonderful new resources to support those living with dementia and their families.

The MY Trust dementia team have also put together a ‘Dementia Champion Reference File’, a simple guide filled with useful explanations and help. MY Staff can access this via the Intranet & we will soon have paper copies available for loan from the library too.

Why not let us know what you think or have any other ideas to support staff and patients?

Thank you to our Trust Communications team for allowing us to use their photographs in our blog post 🙂

It was my first time…at a CILIP conference, after over 17 years in libraries, so finally I made it! Initially I was concerned with practicalities, trains and hotels and connecting up with the YOHHLNet bursary winners. Once sorted I had to set about deciding what I wanted to see and hear. My main aim was to avoid listening to anything to do with the day job, so knowledge management and impact/evaluation, task and finish groups and tool-kits so predominant in the health library sector at the moment were given short shrift [with apologies and a big wink to all those engaged in such things].

I wanted to see/hear something new, something that might move me and/or make me think differently. Two sessions in particular did this for me. This first blog post looks at David McMenemy’s @D_McMenemy talk on ‘sustaining our common values: the pressure at play, and to come…’I found this really interesting and thought-provoking.

BEING UNIVERSAL

David began by asking us to think about what being ‘universal’ meant for libraries, a library for you whoever you are and wherever you come from…and how this was being challenged by the fragmentation of public library services where community and charity run libraries are increasingly replacing that ‘universal offer’. This was particularly interesting to me because my local library is one of those voluntary run community libraries, its great and thriving and the local population I believe absolutely love what it offers both in terms of resources and in terms of Place. As David said it does fit nicely with the Government drivers to enhance community well-being via the use of more volunteers and charitable activities.

But of course not every village or small town has the wherewithal in terms of resources [specifically people with the enthusiasm AND the knowledge/know-how to set-up their own library service] so that immediately places these populations at a disadvantage. With the loss of the universal offer, who you are and where you come from starts to handicap you in terms of access to libraries.

One of the points made was with regard to Who sets the library up, is it a specialist interest group within the community? Or is it weighted towards a particular social class? What might this mean for universal access and is this likely to influence the kinds of resources/activities available? Would it feel or even become exclusive? A library for some but not for everyone, whoever you were and wherever you came from?

PRIVACY

The other aspect of our common values focused on the issue of patron privacy, essentially protecting the right of our patrons’ to privacy in terms of their online activity. As with other organisations LIS have the technologies to hand to analyse the users online searching activities, and to filter out particular content. I found this really interesting because I often simply take this for granted, or don’t even think about what is happening to our service users and indeed myself as a seeker of information in an online world.

Are we both:

snooping into someones private business and

interfering with an individual’s right to seek information

I also found it useful to note that because technology allows us to see what our service users are doing online doesn’t mean that we should just go ahead and access that information, and is it up to us to censor content?

So the central message seemed to me that we should be asking questions, reflecting upon and thinking critically about the values we have within the LIS community. Through research the evaluation and analysis of these values could form the evidence base for a set of commmon values for the future. To see the presentation given by David click here

You may not know how exciting the FREE graphic design software (Canva) is and may feel you cannot read any further, but hold your horses because this piece is about to get much more interesting. Ask yourself: do you want to create professional looking designs for infographics, leaflets, flyers & presentations easily? If so then read on because although I have said this once it bears repeating, It’s FREE!

Today I’m blogging about Canva which we in the library have been getting acquainted with for a few months now. We’ve been using the software to create promotional designs which we can then post on Facebook, add to Tweets, and sure enough here I am blogging about design software.

One of the ways I have found it particularly useful is its role in marketing, gathering together visual images of latest resources adding some blurb and then sending it via Twitter and Facebook to our followers.

More targeted is where we add a graphic display of related resources into email lists.The recipients of which belong to a specific staff group, for example those working within the operating theatres received our ‘all things theatrical’ infographic.

We have had really favourable reactions to this type of promotional activity.

We also use graphical software to promote information about the library more generally – any events looming or specific training courses we have upcoming. Once the graphic is created it can be used again at a later date, copied and edited which is all good recycling practice, saves time and provides us with a usable resource bank for all our promotional activities.

And…we’re getting better

developing our skills by using a wider variety of design formats from flyers to presentations and

we hope to be able to pass this new knowledge on to team members, colleagues, friends and basically anyone who’s interested.

Before I got it right I got it wrong lots of times, this was mighty frustrating but the more I use it the more sense it makes, Canva has become almost indispensable to me at work and… I’m on a voyage of discovery with Prezi of which I will speak more about in the future…